These collective issues relate to the experience of being “a black citizen living in Europe”. The book — illustrated by gritty, original photography — details Pitts’ quest to offer up a more unified picture of black communities across the continent. His aim was to explore “blackness” as something “taking part in shaping European identity at large” as opposed to a sub-plot in a frequently whitened history. He writes that the term “Afropean” suggests “the possibility of living in and with more than one idea: Africa and Europe, or, by extension, the Global South and the West, without being mixed- this, half- that or black- other. That being black in Europe didn’t necessarily mean being an immigrant.” [...]
Afropean adds to a rarely acknowledged but rich body of literature detailing black experience in Russia. The most famous account comes from a group of African-American writers and artists who traveled to the Soviet Union in 1932. Frustrated with the lack of fair representation in Hollywood, they saw the Soviet Union as a place where people of colour could be portrayed in the arts as more than white projections of black identity. Though many eventually became disillusioned with the communist project, their initial impressions were overwhelmingly positive. “I’d read so many pieces of literature by the likes of Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, Claude McKay, black actors and poets and writers who had all gone to Moscow and had a great time,” says Pitts. “A lot of those writers — Harlem renaissance writers specifically — were looking for places they might get equality and Russia seemed like it was leading the way. It seemed here was a real viable alternative.” [...]
A recent report by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance concluded that although the number of hate crimes and racist murders has declined in Russia, “comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation is still lacking and racist and homo/transphobic hate speech is widely used in public discourse”; in March 2019, a professional Russian footballer was fined and given a suspended ban for telling a local newspaper it was “laughable” to have black players in the Russian National team, before later apologising for his comments.
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